I’d love to be one of those happy clappy super-fun snow parents, but I’m not. It’s cold, it’s wet, it takes far more preparation than my small brain can reasonably be expected to organise, and it makes my life unnecessarily complicated.

I HATE the snow.

And I hate it more than usual on this particular occasion because it has exposed me as being more than usually stupid.

I didn’t take the predictions of snow very seriously yesterday. I looked at the weather forecast, you see, and saw it said 1 percent chance of snow. Ah hah! I thought smugly. Other people may be forecasting doom, but not so the trusty MET!

Unfortunately I seem to have confused the symbols for ‘percent’ and ‘degrees’. Yep. The actual forecast was for 1 degree temperatures in Sheffield, with a 90 percent chance of snow.

Idiot.

One of the things I hate even more than snow is NUMBERS. I’m a words girl. And lists or rows of numbers (as on a forecast) simply make me panic. Numbers jump about and do frightening things. Like add up, for instance. (Just not for me). I have genuinely once asked my husband why a pub we were in had an under 21s menu. (It was under 12s).

The numbers aside, I have to say that do I NOT find snow fun. I find snow stressful. I am the world’s worst driver – and that’s without extra steering and vehicular control challenges.

Because I cannot operate a car and look where I’m going at the same time, I drive an automatic – and because I frequently scrape and bump into inanimate objects and don’t know which way to turn the wheel in reverse, I drive an ancient rubbishy automatic that Dadonthenetheredge isn’t too distraught about me slowly trashing over a number of years until it’s worth nothing but scrap.

It is not a good car in the snow.

Dadonthenetheredge did get me some snow socks for it, but we both agree that I am more likely to end up running myself over in an East 17 tribute than I am to successfully apply them.

(Don’t worry Sheffielders, I’m wasn’t on the roads this morning. Other days I can’t vouch for, mind).

I also naturally WALK on snow in a terrified little old-lady shuffle, the one style of walk GUARANTEED to make you fall over and break a hip. Fact. I have tried to stride forth as normal, but as I have neither grace nor balance under normal traction conditions, for some reason I can’t make myself do it. My body literally won’t respond to my commands – which is a bloody weird sensation.

Fortunately a year or so ago I discovered those spikes on elastic bands, which have literally CHANGED MY LIFE. If anyone ever asked me about the greatest human invention, I would not dwell even momentarily on the wheel, iron, electricity, DNA sequencing, computronics, etc, I would cite rubber bands with spikes as the true pinnacle of scientific genius.

Even the magic grips, though, cannot help me with transporting the small people around in snowy conditions.

I live on the top of a big hill, above the snow line. The main roads might be totally clear, but getting up and down my hill is a bloody nightmare. Which means you look like a total twat when trying to explain to sea-level school/work why you can’t get in.

The Big Small is now big enough to go on foot, but the Small Small is still an issue. It’s too far for her to walk to school, too snowy for the buggy, too slippy for the sling, and not snowy enough for the sledge (which if it was snowy enough would go down the hill too bloody fast anyway).

How the Dickens are other people doing this??? Seriously, any top tips on moving small people in winter weather would be gratefully received!

Today I offered Big Small the option of staying home with me and the Small Small or going to school with a very kind neighbour. She didn’t pick me, which is damning indictment of my parenting, but evidence of a commendable sense of self-preservation, as we’d have all fallen out by lunchtime stuck at home together.

Let’s all hope the snow f*cks off until next year.

Although – given that it’s only January – I imagine the probability of that is less than 50 degrees….  

Mumonthenetheredge